Bill C-2 (Historical)

Respect for Communities Act

An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

This enactment amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things,
(a) create a separate exemption regime for activities involving the use of a controlled substance or precursor that is obtained in a manner not authorized under this Act;
(b) specify the purposes for which an exemption may be granted for those activities; and
(c) set out the information that must be submitted to the Minister of Health before the Minister may consider an application for an exemption in relation to a supervised consumption site.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Colleagues, we will call the 37th meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to order. The meeting will be televised today. Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, June 19, 2014, we will be dealing with Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. We will be doing clause-by-clause consideration today.

Pursuant to Standing Order 75(1), consideration of the preamble and clause 1, the short title, is postponed. Therefore, we will carry on with our clauses and the subsequent amendments the chair has before him at this time. Of course, there is the possibility, for those who wish, to make an amendment off the floor, and these can and will be accepted in due course.

It's my understanding that the amendments have also been presented to our analysts, so they have an idea of where these would fall in line with the orderly structure of the clauses to be studied. Should there be any doubt as to where they are placed, the chair will suspend briefly until I get clarification from the analysts as to which position these would be in, if they appear to be out of position in your order. But I'm very confident that our analysts are very capable, quite frankly, and have them properly structured.

Mr. Garrison.

Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Alfred-Pellan for her remarks and for the work she does as the NDP deputy public safety critic. She is a vigilant and hard-working member of our committee and of the NDP team.

She makes an important point. Right now, in the public safety committee, we are dealing with Bill C-2, the safe injection sites bill, which of course really belongs in the health committee, but it is in our committee. We were presented with a very tight timeframe, including a limit, which the Conservatives passed in committee, of five minutes for the discussion of each clause. One of those clauses we are dealing with puts 27 different conditions on the opening of a safe injection site, and we are supposed to have five minutes of debate on that clause.

When it comes to getting this bill to committee, I am urging the government that we not be presented with such narrow and unreasonable time limits so that we can have a full discussion of what is a very important bill.

[Donald MacPherson]

What Bill C-2 doesn't take into account is the tremendous amount of consultation that goes on at the city level through Development Permit Board hearings, and the notification of residents of any new use, whether it be a detox centre, an injection site, or a police department. The community is consulted on all of these things. It's a tremendous amount of work at the local level.

[Tom Stamatakis, President, Canadian Police Association]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to address you this afternoon as part of your continued study on Bill C-2.

As you mentioned, and as most of you know from my previous appearances before this committee, I have the privilege of currently serving as president of the Canadian Police Association, an organization that represents over 54,000 front-line police personnel, both civilian and sworn officers across Canada.

My opening remarks today will be brief. However, I have been closely following the testimony given by other witnesses before this committee. The term “evidence-based” seems to be used quite often, so I'd like to offer you the following today, which should give you an idea of my experience in the area and why I particularly appreciate having the opportunity to present to you today.

I served for 25 years as a constable with the Vancouver Police Department. Currently, along with my duties at the CPA, I am president of the Vancouver Police Union, where Canada's only supervised drug consumption site operates. I believe I can provide you today with an important and first-hand view around why public safety should be an important consideration when discussing supervised consumption sites.

From a front-line policing perspective, Bill C-2 is an important piece of legislation which our association wholeheartedly supports. We believe it strikes an appropriate balance between the needs of protecting community health while taking into account the very real concerns that have been raised by all levels of law enforcement and members of the community regarding supervised drug consumption sites.

I know that your committee has heard concerns raised by opponents to this legislation that the conditions imposed by the bill are onerous and will be difficult to meet for the organizations seeking to open new sites. As a police officer, I am somewhat sympathetic to concerns that paperwork and regulatory frameworks can be difficult and at times even next to impossible to work within. However, I can say that this is the environment that law enforcement professionals work within every day. We don't have the option to cut corners and take the easy way out. Our efforts must be meticulous to pass muster by judges, crown and defence attorneys, community stakeholders, as well as the myriad of oversight bodies that constantly police the police. I don't think it's asking too much of those who wish to work with illicit and dangerous drugs to meet that same standard.

I don't particularly want to use my appearance here today as a platform to re-litigate the merits or drawbacks of supervised consumption sites, but while I will certainly concede that proponents of these sites are passionate advocates who are sincere in their beliefs, I can say that as a police officer who has patrolled and worked in the downtown eastside, there is a significant public safety cost that absolutely must be considered when thoughts are given to opening new sites.

The simple fact is that drugs that are consumed at these sites are illegal substances. An individual doesn't walk to their local pharmacist to obtain their drug of choice. A criminal act takes place with the procurement of their drug. With the grey area that has been created around Insite in the downtown eastside, our officers are asked to exercise incredible discretion in their policing efforts, but the drug dealers are ready and particularly eager to exploit this discretion to the fullest extent possible.

Another unfortunate truth is that those who are using these drugs are not cashing in their RRSPs, selling their stock options, or using their discretionary income to buy their illicit drugs. They're resorting to often desperate, and most often, criminal behaviour in order to obtain the resources necessary to purchase the drugs. This leads to an increase in theft, assault, and prostitution in the immediate area around the site, and sometimes an attempt to inject drugs.

All of this comes at a cost. Very few unbiased observers would walk the downtown eastside of Vancouver and claim using only the eye test that Insite is an overwhelming success. I certainly wouldn't claim that everything in the neighbourhood would be rainbows and unicorns without the presence of Insite; it is an unfortunate and unavoidable byproduct of its continued operation.

This isn't to suggest that we should turn our backs on those who have fallen victim to addiction. It would be impossible for me to list all of the initiatives taken by police services and other agencies across this country to deal with drug consumption. I firmly believe we can build on those programs that have been found to be successful, but while drug initiatives vary widely in scope and in operation, the one constant is that public safety is never jeopardized and the protection of our communities' most vulnerable is always paramount.

Unfortunately, the debate around Insite and any other proposed consumption site has become extremely charged, and in a number of cases very personal. I have witnessed and been targeted by those who don't appreciate my advocacy on behalf of my members in opposition to these sites. While I do try to see the debate from their perspective, I hope today they might try to see it from mine. I have walked the downtown eastside. I've spoken regularly with police officers who are given the difficult and dangerous task of patrolling this area on a regular basis. I can say without a doubt that while studies may trumpet the health benefits of supervised drug consumption, those same studies always underestimate the public safety cost that comes as a result.

In our estimation, Bill C-2 is a reasonable response to the Supreme Court of Canada decision that allows Insite to continue operations.

This proposed legislation doesn't close the door on new consumption sites, but does set an appropriately high standard that needs to be met before these sites can open. It asks for input to be sought from a number of stakeholders, including law enforcement, and our association appreciates the steps taken by the government in this regard.

I would like to conclude by offering one suggestion for amendment within the legislation. Proposed subsection 56.1(3) specifies the consultation conditions that need to be met before the minister authorizes any new supervised drug consumption sites. Proposed paragraph 56.1(3)(e) says that a letter must be obtained from the head of the police force that is responsible for providing police services in the municipality in which the site seeks to operate.

While this is a good first step, I believe the legislation should go further. For instance, the act itself should also specifically designate the president of the local police association union or the staff relations representative as a key stakeholder in the process.

While police executives must have a role in determining conditions for any drug site, the reality is that many executive positions within the police service are determined by a police board that can often be beholden to local politics, whatever they might be. In many jurisdictions across Canada, a police chief's employment is determined by the police board, which is dominated by provincial and municipal political appointments. The president of the local association, however, is elected solely by the front-line civilian and sworn members that make up the police service. His or her views would be shaped by those he or she represents and they would be free to make those views known to the minister.

Aside from that small change, the Canadian Police Association is happy to offer our support for Bill C-2, as we believe that public safety concerns do need to be put on a par with community health concerns when it comes to supervised drug consumption sites.

Once again, I thank you for the opportunity to appear today and, as well, I thank you on behalf of my colleagues who were able to appear last week on this proposed legislation. I look forward to any questions you might have.

[Donald MacPherson, Executive Director, Canadian Drug Policy Coalition]

Thank you for inviting me to speak to this committee today on such an important issue for Canadians, especially those experiencing severe addiction and mental health issues.

In our brief, which is a collaboration with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, we have outlined many of the benefits of supervised consumption services around the world and our concerns with Bill C-2 as it is currently drafted. We, along with others appearing before you, have made the point that the services that Bill C-2 is focused on are evidence-based, have been around for close to 30 years in various jurisdictions, and are a part of a comprehensive approach to developing systems of care for people with severe addictions at the margins of society.

I have worked for many years in the field of drug policy and have been a participant in the broad public discussion that has been taking place in Vancouver, B.C. over the past 20 years focused on building a more effective response to drug problems in our country. As a staff person with the City of Vancouver for 22 years, 10 of those working as the city's drug policy coordinator, I know only too well the challenges for municipalities and local health authorities attempting to do the right thing, which is to put in place a comprehensive system of care for people with drug problems in the community. This includes drug treatment facilities, detox units, scaled-up methadone programs, supportive housing projects for people with addictions and mental health issues, needle exchange projects, other types of social development programs, and yes, supervised consumption services.

Because of the stigma of illegal drug use, each one these services is a challenge for municipalities and health authorities to implement at the local level. It requires a great deal of time, energy, commitment, and resources to get these services up and running and provide much-needed help to people. Believe me, there is a great deal of public process at the local municipal level to situate any of the services that I have mentioned.

Bill C-2 will add an extremely onerous extra layer of work for those at the local level that will most certainly have the effect of preventing the scaling up of supervised consumption services across the country where they may be needed. The 26 different pieces of information required before an application can even be considered would not be required of any other type of health service. At the very least, Bill C-2 will cause a significant delay for localities to implement a timely response to what are often the urgent realities of the unregulated illegal drug scene. An example of this urgency is the recent spate, mentioned by my colleague, of overdoses due to fentanyl in Vancouver, when the Vancouver police, to their credit, urged people to use Insite in an effort to prevent overdose deaths. Thirty-one overdoses took place at Insite over Thanksgiving weekend, none of them fatal. This is a tool that other localities do not have access to at this time.

We are very sorry that this legislation is not coming before the Standing Committee on Health. After all, the primary purpose of supervised consumption services is to intervene in urgent public health contexts where vulnerable citizens are at high risk of serious and sometimes deadly consequences of injection drug use. Consumption services can mitigate this risk, including improving the health and safety of the communities where they might appropriately be located. A hearing only before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security does not seem adequate to consider the complexity of the health and social issues engaged by these kinds of services. Indeed, supervised consumption services are themselves a balanced approach in that they address both public health and public order issues in communities.

Another contextual comment I wish to make is to note the great divide in the testimony of our health and enforcement colleagues. The divide between the leadership of these two fields of work in our communities is of concern to us and seems to be vast, with virtually all professional health associations that have provided expert advice, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Vancouver Coastal Health, and the Toronto public health department finding Bill C-2 significantly problematic on a number of grounds.

On the enforcement side of things, for the most part, in spite of all the evidence from existing supervised consumption services projects, it seems that there is not even a willingness to consider a trial or pilot project to see what the experience of different models in different localities might be. In the face of all the evidence of 30 years of positive experience of integrated consumption services into the systems of care in Europe, in Vancouver, and in Sydney, Australia, there seems to be a firm position against any such trials on behalf of our police leadership.

We think that the divide between these two critical fields of public service is unfortunate, as we are certain that the health and enforcement institutions in this country share the goals of healthy, safe communities for all Canadian citizens, including those who use drugs.

As we have written in our brief, by advocating a focus on public safety at the expense of public health, the context of these hearings being a prime example, the bill runs counter to the court's emphasis on striking a balance between public safety and public health.

By making it even more difficult to implement supervised consumption services, Bill C-2 ignores the Supreme Court of Canada's assertion that these services are vital for the most vulnerable groups of people who use drugs, and that preventing access to these services violates human rights.

In the words of the chief medical health officer of Vancouver Coastal Health, Bill C-2 as currently configured will “effectively act to block exemptions” and “the provision of life-saving medical services to some of our most marginalized citizens and result in deaths and serious illnesses that are entirely preventable”. If this is the case, it is our judgment that this clearly contradicts the spirit of the Supreme Court decision on Insite.

Making it more difficult to open consumption services in Canada is clearly out of step with the commitment that this government has expressed to address Canada's serious mental health situation as well. Consumption services aim to engage marginalized people who use drugs. In Canada the percentage of homeless people who have either a mental illness or a substance abuse diagnosis is 86%, and the percentage of homeless people with a mental illness who also have a substance abuse problem is 75%. Many of those who inject drugs would benefit greatly from the engagement with health, social workers, and drug treatment professionals through their participation in a comprehensive supervised consumption service program.

At Vancouver's Insite, 65% of participants have had a previous diagnosis of mental illness. Given these numbers, putting barriers in the way of implementing supervised consumption services seems at odds with this government's stated commitment towards the mentally ill in Canada. One would like to think that the government would want to facilitate the development of one more evidence-based tool in the tool box to help address mental health and addictions in this country.

A recent systematic review of injection sites released last week, conducted by four researchers from France and one from Switzerland, reviewed 75 relevant articles. The findings of the systematic review were as follows. All studies converged to find that supervised injection services were efficacious in attracting the most marginalized people who inject drugs, promoting safer injection conditions, enhancing access to primary health care, and reducing the overdose frequency. Supervised injection services were not found to increase drug injecting, drug trafficking, or crime in the surrounding environments. Supervised injection services were found to be associated with reduced levels of public drug injections and dropped syringes.

I will close by reminding the committee that the issue of supervised consumption services came to the fore after a decade-long public health and public safety disaster in Vancouver, and indeed British Columbia, during the 1990s. Thousands of people died and many more became ill during that period. The epidemics of overdose, HIV, hepatitis C, and injection drug use overwhelmed Vancouver's inner city. At the time, Michael O'Shaughnessy, the director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, coined the phrase “deadly public policy” to refer to the mix of municipal, provincial, and federal policies in the areas of social assistance, housing, mental health and addictions, and lack of funding for health and social programs, and enforcement practices, etc., that contributed to inadvertently creating the conditions for an HIV epidemic among injection drug users to flourish in Vancouver.

In British Columbia much time has been spent trying to undo those deadly public policies with some good successes. If Bill C-2 is implemented in its current form, our organizations would certainly consider it to be a step backward, creating yet another deadly public policy as it clearly will have the impact of denying marginalized and often seriously ill Canadian citizens and their communities access to proven life-saving health services.

I thank you very much.

[Adrienne Smith, Health and Drug Policy Staff Lawyer, Pivot Legal Society]

Thank you, Chairperson and honourable members.

I'd like to begin by saying that this is a bad bill. From a legal perspective, the bill is a hyperbolic response to a subtle point of law. It will likely not withstand constitutional scrutiny, and it invites an expensive and pointless charter challenge.

As a representative of the Pivot Legal Society, an organization that uses the law to address the root causes of poverty and marginalization in Canada, this bill will restrict access to a proven health care service, which will result in needless human suffering for some of the most vulnerable Canadians.

I would like to use some of my time to correct something that the Minister of Health said in her remarks on Monday. She spoke about the necessity of this bill, and she said that Bill C-2 was required because of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision. With respect, the minister is mistaken.

I propose to briefly outline what the Supreme Court of Canada said to show that Bill C-2 is a significant departure from the guidance of the court and to outline some of the consequences of this bill coming into force.

I don't believe that this committee needs background about the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, but I should say that it is a blanket criminal law. Exemptions under section 56 suspend the action of that law for certain purposes, and it's in this exemption that Insite currently exists. In a section 56 exemption, the law is suspended.

The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness talked last week about the 101 places where drug users could act illegally. But, contrary to what he said, in technical terms, the act is suspended, not broken.

In the Supreme Court of Canada case PHS v. Canada, which is the court case about this section, there were a number of very clear findings: that a supervised injection service is a health service; that people who inject drugs are exposed to a number of harms as a result of their illness, to the extent that their charter rights are engaged; and that the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as we've heard many times, has a dual purpose: one is to protect public health and the other is to protect public safety. Also, the minister's discretion must be exercised within the parameters of the charter, and she must balance this dual purpose.

In the context of Insite—and significantly, this is the point of the PHS decision—when there is not evidence of a public safety threat, exemptions must generally be granted. They're presumptive, nearly, and to ensure that the minister's discretion in balancing did not lead to arbitrary decision-making, there were five permissive factors, which are very narrow, and the minister must consider them if they're available. That is all that is required.

What Bill C-2 does is a significant departure from that. It answers the requirement that exemptions generally be granted, which the court directed, with a presumption in the bill that exemptions will generally be withheld. It ignores the requirement that the CDSA is a balancing bill that requires aspects of public health and public safety by framing the question of supervised injection service as a narrow public safety issue, and only in a negative way. It also expands the court's five permissive factors into 26 impossible criteria, which will lead to a limiting of the availability of this necessary health service.

With respect, Bill C-2 is more about this federal government's distaste for this kind of health service than it is about anything the court said. The results of this are problematic and unconstitutional. The effect of Bill C-2 will be to frustrate the application process for health care providers and restrict access to supervised injection services and approvals for future centres.

For the reasons that are set out in my brief which is before you and for those following at home can be downloaded from the parliamentary website, the bill perpetrates a number of head-on assaults to other constitutional provisions that are the legal backbone of this nation.

This is important for two reasons. There are two sets of consequences that will flow from this bill, and the first is legal. Bill C-2 will not withstand constitutional scrutiny. It will invite an extensive and pointless charter challenge and a long series of litigation on a point of law that is already settled, under a legislative framework that is arguably worse than the one the Supreme Court of Canada condemned. If the Insite decision was a question about how the charter rights of drug users were violated by an initiative to prevent access to supervised injection services, it is difficult to see how this is not exactly the same thing.

The second public health outcome of Bill C-2 is arguably more important. Passing Bill C-2 will have devastating and unconscionable consequences for the most vulnerable of Canadians who are members of our community. The barriers the bill presents to accessing life-saving health care will allow a heartbreaking public health emergency to continue under a law and order agenda and expose patients and communities to infection, to suffering, and to death.

I live three blocks away from Insite in Vancouver's downtown eastside. On Thanksgiving weekend, when healthier Canadians were sitting down and eating their turkey suppers, a narcotic opioid drug called fentanyl was being passed off by street dealers as heroin. It is indistinguishable to users, but it is an order of magnitude more powerful than heroin.

As a result, on Thanksgiving Monday there were 10 overdoses; on the Sunday before, there were 16, and there were five the following day, all of these at Insite. Nobody who overdosed at Insite died. Unfortunately, some people did die. I understood that it was two. One was a young woman. One was a man named Tony Snakeskin. I hear from my colleague Mr. Wilson that there were in fact four. These people died because they were alone and they did not have access to medical care.

This is a question not just for Vancouver but for all of our communities. In the summer of 2014, the Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de Montréal investigated 83 cases of overdoses. Twenty-five of them were fatal. In other neighbourhoods across the country, thousands of people have died, and countless more will die if they do not have the access to supervised injection services that the court said was required.

To conclude, I will say that Bill C-2 is contrary to what the court ordered. It is unconstitutional, and it will allow people to die.

As I just mentioned in English, the Minister of Health told you the the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Canada (Attorney General) v. PHS Community Services Society requires you to pass this bill. With respect, I must tell you that she is wrong.

What the decision indicates is that the rights of drug users are protected by the Charter and the minister must grant an exemption to allow supervised injection sites.

Bill C-2 could result in useless legal proceedings because the government cannot tolerate the existence of this kind of care. While we wait, our neighbours will die. It is unconstitutional and we cannot countenance anything of the kind.

The bill says quietly that the federal government does not value the lives of people who use drugs and people whose lives would be saved by this service.

Subject to your questions, those are my submissions.

[Dean Wilson]

I'm going to reiterate what Inspector Scott Thompson just said. It's raising the bar so high that it will never get done. If you read the judgment of the Supreme Court, they again framed it. They said that our right to health has to be balanced with the laws of Canada. If you went to the downtown eastside and saw those 4,000 to 12,000 addicts, whatever the number is, you would say, “My goodness, we need the supervised injection site, because this health is bad and it's deteriorating daily.” As Scott says, with the law, they're working with us there.

I just think that new Bill C-2 will put the bar so high that we'll never be able to have other communities try to use this. It's not the answer in every city, but in some places it is. I know a place in Toronto where it's needed. I know a place in Montreal where it could be used. Those are just two cities I've been to. I don't know if Abbotsford needs one right at the moment, but I think for places like Toronto and Montreal where there are certain neighbourhoods, I'm sure the community there would say, “Yes, let's try something, because everything else hasn't worked.”

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

I'd like to ask you a question. Because Bill C-2 focuses so much on the consultative process around community input into whether a consumption site, an injection site, should be located in a community, in your opinion should community views be considered in the application process of these injection sites?

[Dean Wilson]

Well, I find it really interesting. I just want to say that a week ago I was out at this dinner-date thing and who arrived out of the blue but Judge Pitfield, from the very first decision at the B.C. Supreme Court. He's the most conservative judge in British Columbia. He sat down beside me. I said, “Judge”, and he laughed and said, “Mr. Wilson.” I put it to him and asked him, “When did you decide that this was going to be a legit thing?” He asked me if I remembered the first hour of the trial when he asked the opposition if this was a medical issue, and they hemmed and hawed. He asked again, “Is this a medical issue?” They said yes. He said that he decided right then that the next two days did not matter.

I believe that Bill C-2 will put too many fingers in the pie, or whatever, and too many people that can stop it on nothing but a whim of a moral judgment. I don't think that's right. Nine Supreme Court justices—it was nine to nothing—stated that this was a medical issue and should be treated as such. It was framed within Canada's laws.

The people inside that building are not breaking any Canadian law. If we allow everybody and anybody to have a say and they don't have an actual participation within it.... If you go to any city where there are a lot of drug addicts around, you're going to see those people want a solution. I'm saying that I believe supervised injection sites are a beginning solution to the problem. It's not the be-all and end-all. In fact, it's probably only the first 20 or 30 minutes of the change in my life, that injection. There's a lot after that, but if we don't give those people that first 20 minutes, where are they going to go?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I do think that Mr. Falk is correct in one point, and that is we are here debating Bill C-2 and whether or not this bill meets the test of the Supreme Court of Canada.

I remember that you were at the Supreme Court of Canada the day the decision came down. You've been involved in this for a very long time. One question I have, because you have followed it so closely.... Never mind all the studies. As you say, there are overwhelming studies that support Insite, but obviously some people will never ever believe the evidence before them. At the end of the day, you're someone who has direct experience, and not only in the process. You know how much we went through in Vancouver. There was a lot of public consultation, and sometimes it was really tough going—

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay. So I don't see anywhere in the Scriptures that would support your statement. Anyway, I'm going to read something for you.

First I want to make a general statement. I'm a little disappointed in a couple of the presentations I heard today, because they're defending or arguing against the merits of Insite. I don't think that's what we're doing here today. We're talking about Bill C-2, which is about respecting and protecting communities.

The Supreme Court rendered a decision about Insite as a supervised injection site. The court affirmed the discretionary power of the minister to grant exemptions but stated that decisions must be made in accordance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and balance public health and safety concerns. The court specified factors that the minister must consider when assessing an application for a supervised injection site. These included any evidence related to “the impact of such a facility on crime rates, the local conditions indicating a need for such a...site, the regulatory structure in place to support the facility, the resources available to support its maintenance, and expressions of community support or opposition.”

My question for you, Mr. Wilson, is this. Is it reasonable for the government to require community input on proposals to establish injection sites, especially given the Supreme Court's ruling that the minister must consider such views?

[David Berner, Executive Director, Drug Prevention Network of Canada]

Honourable members, the Drug Prevention Network of Canada is pleased to support Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, known as the respect for communities act.

So-called safe injection sites, which are hubs for illegal and anti-social behaviours, will not be welcomed by neighbourhoods if these operations are simply thrust upon them. Asking the promoters of this failed and woollen-headed experiment to answer some serious questions before building their empire at the expense of local integrities is the very least we can do as a democracy. We applaud the current administration for this initiative.

Let's look at pieces of the bill and at the real evidence, not the questionable studies presented by the very people who built Insite.

A report by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS on harm reduction programs and Insite released last summer, for example, is not science; it's public relations. Authors Julio Montaner, Thomas Kerr, and Evan Wood have produced nearly two dozen papers on the use of Insite. They have been awarded more than $18 million of taxpayer money in recent years. Predictably, they boast of good results in connecting addicts to treatment, but convincing evidence is not only lacking, it's non-existing.

The current campaign reports significant reductions in drug overdoses, yet the Government of British Columbia selected vital statistics and health status indicators show that the number of deaths from drug overdose in Vancouver's downtown eastside has increased every year, with one exception, since the site opened in 2003.

In addition, the federal government's own advisory committee on drug injection sites report only 5% of drug addicts use the injection site and 3% were referred for treatment. I believe that's terribly high. There is no indication the crime rate has decreased as well as no indication of decrease in AIDS and hepatitis C since the injection site was opened.

Claims of success for Insite made in The Lancet, the famous British medical journal, in 2011 were challenged vigorously in a 15-page heavily documented response and by addiction specialists from Australia, the U.S., and Canada and by a former Vancouver Police Department officer who worked the downtown eastside for years.

In “A Critical Evaluation of the Effects of Safe Injection Facilities” for the Institute on Global Drug Policy, Dr. Garth Davies who is a Simon Fraser University associate professor wrote:

However, the methodological and analytic approaches used in these studies have not been scrutinized to any significant degree. Previous studies are compromised by an array of deficiencies, including a lack of baseline data, insufficient conceptual and operational clarity, inadequate evaluation criteria, absent statistical controls, dearth of longitudinal designs, and inattention to intrasite variation. [...[ In truth, none of the impacts attributed to SIFs can be unambiguously verified.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is exactly what happened. The three good doctors were originally working on HIV/AIDS, and they did something curious because it had an unintended consequence. They resolved the problem of HIV/AIDS in a wonderful way, and their work is magnificent, but they put themselves out of work, so they turned their attention to addictions using the same template to get money and to support what they believe and so on. It's the old journalistic story of follow the money.

I had dinner a few months ago with somebody who used to work at Insite, and he said that he had to quit because he thought the place was evil. I said we agreed on that but why did he think it was evil? He told me it was because he had seen the so-called researchers counting one addict five times. He'd seen this several times. He has also seen so-called researchers interviewing an addict moments after the addict has just shot up. Now I ask you all when you leave this committee meeting, please go to the local hospital and go in a room where somebody is in a coma and try to interview them and see what that's like, because that's what you will get when you talk to someone who has just shot up.

Dr. Colin Mangham, who is on the board of directors of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, has been a researcher in this field since 1979. He said:

The proposal for Insite was written by the same people who are evaluating it – a clear conflict of interest. Any serious evaluation must be independent. All external critiques or reviews [of the Insite evaluations], there are four of them — found profound overstatements and evidence of interpretation bias. All of the evidence — on public disorder, overdose deaths, entry into treatment, containment of serum borne viruses, and so on — is weak or [entirely] non-existent and certainly does not support the claims of success. There is every appearance of the setting of an agenda before Insite ever started, then a pursuit of that agenda, bending or overstating results wherever necessary.

Let's look at the bill itself. Under proposed new subsection 56.1(3), the minister “may consider an application...after the following priorities have been established”, and I will just refer to two of them: “(a) scientific evidence demonstrating...medical benefit...”. Well, we submit to you that there is no such legitimate clear, clean, and independent evidence. Quite the contrary, nothing has changed. The very idea that giving addicts a place to shoot up will help them in any manner shows an extraordinary lack of understanding of the issue of addiction.

Let me make this very simple and very clear. What do addicts want? Addicts want more. The don't want more tickets to ball games. They don't want more children. They don't want more bicycles. They don't want more violin lessons. They want more drugs. That's what they want, so an addicted man or woman may inject under a nurse’s supervision, but two hours later, that same addict is back in the alley doing what he or she knows how to do. Why? The addict's life is not about a quarter of a gram of inert white powder; it is about a culture and a way of living.

Going back to the criteria, “The Minister may consider an application...”, proposed new paragraph 56.1(b)(iii) says “provides information about access to drug treatment” centres. Oh, that this were so. I happen to know every treatment centre in British Columbia and most in Canada because of the work I do, and in spite of Mr. Wilson's passionate testimony, let me give you my passionate testimony. I have yet to hear of one addict—one—being referred to a treatment centre. I haven't met him. I haven't heard of her. I don't know their names because it doesn't happen. I know all the people who run treatment centres and they will all tell you that they've never had an addict being referred from Insite.

You see, Insite is not about recovery. The good doctors who built it actually don’t believe in recovery. They think that abstinence is a fantasy. The provincial health authorities don’t support abstinence-based recovery, and these are the very people who whisper in the ear of the provincial health minister. All of these people want to give addicts free needles, free crack pipe kits, free heroin, methadone, lessons on wine making for alcoholics, and comfy places to shoot up. Insite, you have to understand, is the tip of the iceberg. It is the flagship for a very dark philosophy that says, “You, my boy, are hopeless, so we're going to keep you pacified and pray that you will not break into our condos and cars”. You can see how this arrogant and misguided approach is working, how elegantly it fails to enhance the lives of either addicts or communities.

The sad truth, ladies and gentlemen, is this. In my province, the poor get methadone and the rich get private treatment clinics. I happen to work at one of those rich private treatment clinics.

On proposed new paragraph 56.1(3)(i), item (iii), “the presence of inappropriately discarded drug-related litter”, I have a friend who owns a building in the downtown eastside. She's trying to run a business there, and she has been fighting with the City of Vancouver for two years asking if it would please remove those damned blue boxes from the back alley, and the City said, no, that's where the addicts are going to throw their needles.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but I don't know of any addicts who are up for good housekeeping awards, so my friend who owns this building and is trying to conduct a regular business down there regularly has needles all over the place and human body waste. You ask communities if they are ready for that and if they are prepared to host that kind of lunacy, and ask the good doctors who promoted this madness to establish one of their projects next to their homes.

Finally, I want to make a comment about two opponents' responses in the House. The Honourable Judy Sgro, a Liberal from York West, said when this was being debated in the House, “The only success I have seen so far, which is limited, is the safe injection site in Vancouver.” Well, the good member is right. Her views are extremely limited. All she has to do is go to any city in Canada, and there are hundreds and hundreds of wonderful prevention or treatment programs operating—not as many as we could have, but there are many of them, so if that's the only thing she has seen, that's the only thing she has seen.

The Honourable Libby Davies, the NDP member for Vancouver East—

[Dean Wilson, Prior Plaintiff, As an Individual]

Thank you. I'm a little nervous. The last time I was dressed like this in front of people like you, the last thing I heard was “guilty as charged”.

I appreciate the chance to give testimony regarding Bill C-2, but I'm also confused. I thought the Supreme Court of Canada's decision of September 30, 2011, finalized the issue of supervised injection sites. The court decided that supervised injection sites were legal and constitutional. I guess the present government feels it can sidestep the highest court's decision, and because the legal route has now closed, it will regulate supervised injection sites out of business.

One only has to read the three judgements, those of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the appellate court of British Columbia, and the Supreme Court of Canada, to feel the spirit in which the courts framed the supervised injection site issue within the laws of Canada. What those judgements specify is that supervised injection sites are a medical issue and should be treated as such.

I know the decisions do not sit well with the Conservative government, and it wishes to shut down supervised injection sites, stating it supports the treatment of drug addicts over harm reduction initiatives. This is incredibly misleading, as the government does not support treatment either. The Auditor General's report of 2002 showed 95¢ of every dollar the government spends on the illicit drug issue goes to enforcement, leaving only 5¢ for everything else, including treatment. This does not sound like support to me. In fact, it makes me feel the federal government doesn't care about the most downtrodden of its citizens.

I realize drug addicts seem to be the new pariahs and the only outcome is jail or the cemetery, but I believe from personal experience that everyone counts.

I'm a 58-year-old man who presently has five years of sobriety. Before that, I was a street-entrenched polydrug addict using heroin and cocaine, which very few people supported even though I was a noted advocate for the rationalization around the drug issue, which was documented in the Genie Award-winning documentary Fix: The Story of an Addicted City.

I know the following seems counterintuitive, but it was the building of relationships with the medical staff at Insite that allowed me to take the first step, that being detox. I relapsed the first few times, but through perseverance by the staff at Insite and myself, I now live a straight life. It proves that anyone can change.

This change is what everyone in the downtown eastside really wants. This is not a party drug consumption place where people smoke a couple of joints on a Friday night. These streets are filled with people who have experienced incredible trauma in their lives and are just trying to cope.

I recall the story of a 19-year-old girl I met at Insite. She said it was her birthday. I said happy birthday to her, but she indicated that birthdays were incredibly sad to her. I asked why. She bluntly stated that on her 10th birthday, her father passed her around sexually to her three uncles. I was left speechless. How does anyone cope or recover from something so horrible? This is just one of many stories in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. I do not care what anyone says: that girl deserves whatever treatment is needed, including supervised injection.

Sometimes I wonder if those opposed to our centre actually know the full extent of the work we do there. I think we do a disservice in Canada and Europe by the names we call our sites. “Drug consumption rooms” in Europe and “supervised injection sites” in Canada are very descriptive phrases, but only describe a very small part of the services we offer.

In Canada at Insite our model is similar to the “drogenhaus” treatment centres in Germany. These are multiple-floor treatment centres where the higher up you go, the more involved is your treatment.

On the first floor at Insite we have the supervised injection room, but also a chill room where we can observe people both before and after injection, a health room where nurses on site can triage, and also two staff members who circulate among the users and try to hook them up with whatever services might be needed.

I have seen these staff members get housing for people, get them to health care, and in one case go so far as to get a person a bus ticket home, which we know had a very good outcome.

On the second floor is the detoxification centre. It is ironic that for a government that only believes in treatment, it took Insite, the supervised injection site, to open the first new detox in Vancouver in decades that I'm aware of.

It is the third floor that is critical. It is the transitional housing unit. Let me explain.

Most people can detox from a drug they are using in 7 to 10 days, but most long-term treatment centres require 30 days clean before they will admit someone. This left us with a 20-day gap, where the person leaving detox typically had to go back to the same environment that caused them to seek detox in the first place. The transitional housing unit therefore allows the person to stay in a treatment environment until they can get into long-term treatment centres. Bridging this three-week gap has been the most important service that I have seen, second only to the critical initial intervention that is the supervised injection. The results of all this have been documented in many scientific journals.

As for the science behind supervised injection sites, I can quote ad nauseam the scientific and medical published papers in support of Insite. In fact, there are over 60 published papers in support of Insite and I have yet to see one that does not support the work being done there.

In Bill C-2, Canadian Police Association president Tom Stamatakis is quoted as saying that in his experience, supervised injection sites “lead to an increase in criminal behaviour”. This is not backed up by science. Papers in both Canada and Europe suggest the exact opposite. Again, it seems counterintuitive, but again I believe the relationships between the drug users and the staff at Insite have a lot to do with this. While purely anecdotal, I have seen a great resurgence in those who visit Insite. It's like they have realized that somebody actually cares about them, and therefore, they want to care about themselves. This is certainly the first step to reclaiming their lives.

I think the government should be assisting, not putting up roadblocks, when helping communities with problems surrounding the drug issue. Supervised injection sites are not the only answer, but they certainly have a part to play with the street-entrenched drug user. Supervised injection sites hold out the first line of treatment and we should be doing everything possible to replicate the successes of Insite.

We do not support putting up supervised injection sites if all the supports are not in place. We also strongly believe that this is a medical issue and has to be treated as such. While enforcement is part of every discussion on the drug issue, it should not be weighed more heavily than any other part. We should also use this discussion to talk about more traditional treatment protocols. More detox centres are needed, as well as transitional housing units and long-term treatment centres.

This brings me to another dilemma. Why is the government tossing aside the law and the science regarding this issue? Is it based purely on the moral aspect of this issue? If this is, they are again wrong. There have been over two million injections at Insite, with 4,000 medically intervened overdoses, yet not one life has been lost. This goes in the face of Bill C-2's assertion that only one life per year is saved.

This brings me to the fact that I surely hold the higher moral ground. I choose to help the most disenfranchised in our communities. The only comparison I can think of is the lepers of biblical times. Their communities also shunned them. But as now, so was it then, and there are some who have chosen to help. I will close with this: If Jesus were alive today, he certainly, most certainly, would support supervised injections sites.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Colleagues, I will call to order the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. This is meeting number 36, and we're continuing our study on Bill C-2 today.

We have two hours of witness testimony today. For the first hour, we have with us Dean Wilson, prior plaintiff. By video conference from Vancouver we have from the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, David Berner, executive director, and from the Vancouver Police Department, Inspector Scott Thompson, district 1 commander, operations division.

Gentlemen, on behalf of the committee, I welcome you.

Colleagues, the second hour of testimony and questioning today will be cut a little short due to the bells. I'll give you notice now so that you can be prepared for that.

We will now proceed with the first hour of business today.

Gentlemen, I will call you to the table here and inform you that you have up to 10 minutes for an opening statement. Since time is rather tight, the chair will keep you to that. If you can make it a little bit shorter, that would be much appreciated.

Mr. Dean Wilson, you have the floor, sir.

[Chief Bryan Larkin]

Well, yes, the Canadian chiefs are supportive of Bill C-2 if it meets the 27—